Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Wow! So much has happened in the last few months...

Conor had a program at school. He sang all the words to "Santa Claus us coming to town" and "Jingle Bells" and even wore the Santa hat like all the other kids in his class. However, he refused to wear the cute Christmas shirt we had bought him...

He is the tiny little guy on the far left ....

After the program, Conor had a chance to chat with Santa Claus. For days he had been practicing what he was going to say over and over and over...
Conor had a Christmas Party at daycare. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go, but my Dad went and took pictures....
We had a cake on Conor's official Birthday. Papa did a great job on picking out a fabulous looking cake for our Big Man.
Can you believe that he is 4?? These dinosaurs are so neat. They roar and walk...
Conor has a serious fascination with his Red Power Ranger outfit from the Disney Store. He wears it a lot... in fact he is wearing it now..
I don't know what other people's Christmas trees look like, but this is how it looks at my parents house...
Conor anxiously waits for Daddy to start passing out the presents...


Conor got two new pairs of shoes for Christmas. He was really excited about them when we told him they were Optimus Prime and Bumblebee shoes...
Guy looks pleased with his Christmas gifts!
Cousins... The Fam before Guy left to go back to Boston.
Last but definitely not least, Craig and I bought a new car yesterday. Most of you know, we made the sad choice of purchasing a minivan 2.5 years ago. I thought I was making a good decision for gas by trading in my '03 Expedition for this van. Well, it turned out to make sense. I bitched about it quite a bit because it was so uncool. As time goes on, I learn to like the van and a couple of months ago, I had made the decision that I was going to drive the van until it fell apart. Well..... I didn't realize it was going to fall apart two months later. Let me list all the tings that were going to crap on it.....

1. From the 2nd month I had bought it struggled to start. I took it to the Chevy dealer on 5 separate occasions, but they could never "replicate" the problem. A few harsh words, and a couple of calls to GM, nothing was resolved.


2. I opened the glove box one day last year and it would never close shut. I took it in to the dealer and had it fixed under warranty. A few months later I opened it again, and it wouldn't close. The warranty had run out and I wasn't about to pay to have it fixed to I "fixed" it myself.


3. The motor went out on the passenger side window, had it replaced under warranty. A few months later the driver side window started acting up. Had it replaced too. Go figure a few months later the window would barely roll up or down.. (are you seeing a pattern here???)


4. The paint starting peeling on the roof... WTF?? Come on people, it is a 2005,


5. Last and worst of all, the transmission started slipping.

My advice to you don't buy a van that starts with a "V" and ends with "enture".

So Craig and I sat down and discussed all the issues...Do we keep it and hope we can get another couple of years out of it? Do we get it fixed and spend upwards of $1500 or more? Or do we trade it in, and hope to God the next person who buys it gets an extended warranty?

We chose the latter of the three. We are the proud new owners of an '06 Expedition. More importantly we have a 48 month/48,000 mile warranty on it. So if anything (knock on wood) goes wrong with it we are covered. So this is my third Expedition...I don't know why I ever tried to drive something else! I love these things..

So...it has been a fabulous 2007 and I am ready to devour my bowl of ritual black eyed peas. My entire family had a great year. We hope that 2008 has many more great things to come.

Cheers!